Tickets for raffle and door prize drawings are typically dispensed from a roll of tickets made up of double or twin strands of tickets, where each individual ticket has a twin with a corresponding identifier such as a serial number. A double or twin roll of tickets is a roll of two strands of tickets having twin tickets joined longitudinally, lengthwise, and also joined to preceding and succeeding tickets at a each end at the transverse axis of the ticket. Each ticket is typically perforated at its joined edges for easy detachment by tearing, where it joins its twin and the preceding and succeeding tickets. The Double Raffle Ticket Roll products currently sold by the Century Novelty company of Livonia, Mich. are examples of such a double roll of tickets, the Blue Double Raffle Ticket Roll, item number 427-041 for example.
The tickets of each set of twin or even multiple tickets are twins because they are marked with a common identifier, usually identical serial numbers, to reflect that they are twin tickets. Each successive set of twin or multiple tickets are marked with the same identifier. In a typical raffle when a buyer purchases a ticket he is given that ticket and the twin of that ticket is kept by the seller to be used in a drawing. One of the twin tickets is given to the buyer as proof that he purchased a ticket with a particular identifier and the other is kept by the seller to be placed in a hopper or other container, so that it may by chance be randomly selected by the seller as the winning ticket. If the buyer has the twin of the winning ticket it can be presented to the seller for whatever prize is being awarded for that raffle contest.
Dispensing these tickets therefore requires a user, the seller, to split or tear the double roll into two strands, one for the buyer and one for the seller to keep. Most buyers prefer to have their purchased buyer's tickets kept intact as a strand when they purchase more than one ticket. The seller however must usually also tear the twin strand of seller's tickets transversely at each end to make it into an individual ticket, to be placed in the container for the later drawing.
This task requires the repetitive and laborious tearing of tickets along their length and then at the ends. The task is also time-consuming, potentially making buyers wait in long lines to buy their tickets.
What is needed then is a ticket dispenser that will dispense raffle tickets while tearing a double roll of tickets into two twin strands and further cutting the strand of seller tickets into individual tickets for the drawing.